“Boston has a long and complicated past, and its many archives and databases each tell little pieces of that story—a photo album here, a map there, a batch of letters and some old news articles somewhere else. But what do we do with all that stuff? What kinds of secrets are buried in all that material scattered around the city?

In the era of Big Data (a term used to describe analysis of giant datasets with powerful computers), a group of researchers at Northeastern’s Snell Library say it’s time to find out. This spring, thanks to a grant from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, they’re launching a new Boston Research Center, where they plan to compile and study the city’s history using modern tools, hoping to glean new revelations about the place we live.”

The article also discusses the role that the NULab will play:

“One new project the Boston Research Center team is excited about involves placing thousands of historic pictures of Boston on an interactive map, as a way of tracking growth and decay in parts of the city over several decades. They say they plan to release a handful of new data-driven projects by the end of the year, with help from the NULab for Texts, Maps, and Networks and the Boston Area Research Initiative, an inter-university partnership that brought us the Boston Research Map.”